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This, then, was the old school building, standing foursquare to the world, with its shuttered windows, its lofty, tiled roof, and the spiked lightning-conductors pointing like black and taloned fingers from the corners. For a long time he stood and stared. Then, presently, he came to himself again, and realised to his joy that a light still shone in the windows of the Bruderstube.

He turned from the road and passed through the iron railings; then climbed the twelve stone steps and stood facing the black wooden door with the heavy bars of iron, a door he had once loathed and dreaded with the hatred and passion of an imprisoned soul, but now looked upon tenderly with a sort of boyish delight.

Almost timorously he pulled the rope and listened with a tremor of excitement to the clanging of the bell deep within the building. And the long-forgotten sound brought the past before him with such a vivid sense of reality that he positively shivered. It was like the magic bell in the fairy-tale that rolls back the curtain of Time and summons the figures from the shadows of the dead. He had never felt so sentimental in his life. It was like being young again. And, at the same time, he began to bulk rather large in his own eyes with a certain spurious importance. He was a big man from the world of strife and action. In this little place of peaceful dreams would he, perhaps, not cut something of a figure?

“I’ll try once more,” he thought after a long pause, seizing the iron bell-rope, and was just about to pull it when a step sounded on the stone passage within, and the huge door slowly swung open.

A tall man with a rather severe cast of countenance stood facing him in silence.

“I must apologise–it is somewhat late,” he began a trifle pompously, “but the fact is I am an old pupil. I have only just arrived and really could not restrain myself.” His German seemed not quite so fluent as usual. “My interest is so great. I was here in ’70.”

The other opened the door wider and at once bowed him in with a smile of genuine welcome.

“I am Bruder Kalkmann,” he said quietly in a deep voice. “I myself was a master here about that time. It is a great pleasure always to welcome a former pupil.” He looked at him very keenly for a few seconds, and then added, “I think, too, it is splendid of you to come–very splendid.”

“It is a very great pleasure,” Harris replied, delighted with his reception.

The dimly lighted corridor with its flooring of grey stone, and the familiar sound of a German voice echoing through it,–with the peculiar intonation the Brothers always used in speaking,–all combined to lift him bodily, as it were, into the dream-atmosphere of long-forgotten days. He stepped gladly into the building and the door shut with the familiar thunder that completed the reconstruction of the past. He almost felt the old sense of imprisonment, of aching nostalgia, of having lost his liberty.

Harris sighed involuntarily and turned towards his host, who returned his smile faintly and then led the way down the corridor.

“The boys have retired,” he explained, “and, as you remember, we keep early hours here. But, at least, you will join us for a little while in the Bruderstube and enjoy a cup of coffee.” This was precisely what the silk merchant had hoped, and he accepted with an alacrity that he intended to be tempered by graciousness. “And to-morrow,” continued the Bruder, “you must come and spend a whole day with us. You may even find acquaintances, for several pupils of your day have come back here as masters.”

For one brief second there passed into the man’s eyes a look that made the visitor start. But it vanished as quickly as it came. It was impossible to define. Harris convinced himself it was the effect of a shadow cast by the lamp they had just passed on the wall. He dismissed it from his mind.